Welcome And Guest Intro

Announcer 0:06

Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Perry will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

J.D. Pearring 0:29

Well, welcome to another Leading Conversations podcast with Excel Leadership Network. Today we are thrilled to have uh the great, the mighty Dr. John Jackson here with us. John's been a senior pastor, a staff pastor, a church planter, co-founder of Thrive International. Uh, he was the uh the director of Transformation Ministries when it was the Pacific Southwest region of something or other. And now he is El Presidente, president of William Joseph University here in Northern Cal. Thanks for being with us, John.

John Jackson 1:07

Hey JD, thank you so much. Uh, I'm glad to be here, but I got to tell you, all those roles means I'm looking for something I can do well. I'm trying to figure out what I'm what I'm good at. But I know what Excel Network is great at. You are great at church planting

Grace In Everyday Places

John Jackson 1:20

and supporting leaders. And uh so I just I'm I'm honored at the privilege to have this conversation today.

J.D. Pearring 1:26

Well, it's great. It's great to be with you. I think I think with you, you have one of the deepest talent stacks of anybody I know who can um preach. Also best-selling author. Your new book is killing it, isn't it?

John Jackson 1:40

Yeah, Grace Ambassador. I'm so grateful for that. Uh, you know, JD, sometimes we have these uh microwave moments where we get the aha, but me, I'm a little slow. This has probably been burning in my gut for between 15 and 20 years. So Grace Ambassador uh is doing really well. Uh, some churches are even starting to use it in small groups, which is what I've always prayed for. Uh, and really, if I could just give a quick synopsis, it's I mean, I read it, I loved it. Oh, thank you. Thank you. The Grace Ambassador is all about this. I I've been really bummed out that sometimes as Christians, we buy into the deception that life has sacred and secular parts. And sometimes we think about our vocation as something that takes us away from God. And I just wanted to say to everybody, you can be a Christian in your everyday life. In fact, I think Jesus actually wants us to be ambassadors of heaven, grace ambassadors, to bring God's love, care, and kindness into the everyday at the gym, when you're walking in the neighborhood with your dog, when you're uh at the cube at the office, or you're in the warehouse or delivery truck or at a restaurant with a server, you bring Jesus, you bring his grace everywhere you go. So I'm really trying. It's so is it about evangelism? Yes. Is it about discipleship? Yes. Is it about ministry? Yes. So it's really my whole heart just coming out there. If you're not careful, I'll preach a sermon.

J.D. Pearring 3:03

As it is in heaven, right? That's your big line in the book.

John Jackson 3:07

Yeah. And JD, I have I hate to say this. I mean, my Baptist backgrounds are deep and my roots are deep, and I love uh the word of God. Uh, I have a heart for the Spirit of God and the Word of God being together. But JD, I I say this in the first part of the book. I said the Lord's Prayer over and over and over again. And every time I came to that phrase, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, I actually thought of it as a hallmark card sentiment. Like, oh, that's sweet. Jesus is saying, wouldn't that be just just nice? I never really believed that God expected his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, in the sweet by and by, someday in heaven, yep, all good, but not in the everyday. And so, JD, man, that was a point of conviction about 13 years ago.

J.D. Pearring 3:56

Well, um, John goes into great detail because um, yeah, it was aha for me reading your book. So I highly recommend it. You can get it wherever books are sold, right?

How John Came To Christ

John Jackson 4:05

That's right. That's right.

J.D. Pearring 4:07

Hey, you've had all these roles, um, and you started out early as a pastor. So tell us how how did you come to Christ?

John Jackson 4:15

Well, this is my short story, and again, with my Baptist background, if you'll either forgive or accept that for some of our listeners, let me just say I grew up in church. I was a pastor's kid every Sunday, every Wednesday being in church. JD, at age seven, I walked down the aisle and I remember it. I told my dad, hey, dad, uh, I want to rededicate my life to Jesus. And my dad said, son, um, you haven't prayed to receive Christ yet. And JD, honestly, this is the way it was. I was, I was a good kid. I knew that in a Baptist church you could receive Christ, rededicate your life, become a member of the church, or get baptized. I just didn't know there was an order you had to do those in. So I picked out rededication. So, anyway, long story short, age seven, I pray to receive Jesus. I get baptized shortly after that. But really, JD, it was age 14 when I had this, you know, real, I won't call it a second conversion, but I had this real rededication of my life to Jesus and began to get really serious about I want to live out my faith in the everyday. But JD, I told God at age, I wanted to be a pro baseball player. And it's about two years later.

J.D. Pearring 5:24

Didn't we all? Right?

John Jackson 5:26

I know, exactly. In our era, it was like, yeah, I want to be a baseball player. And and so anyway, I got to the point where between age 15 and 16, I figured out pretty analytical. So I'm good, but I'm not great. So I had a life crisis at age 15, went for about a year. Uh, Lord, what would you have me do with my life? And I remember JD telling, telling the Lord in prayer, just this young man praying with fervency, I will do anything, Lord, to serve you except for two things. I will never ever be a missionary, because missionaries wear grass skirts, they live in grass huts, and they show boring slideshows when they come back to America. That was my view as a 14, 15-year-old. But then the second thing, God, I will never be a pastor. And uh man, JD, I just had one of these experiences, age 16, where I felt like God called me to be a pastor. So from age 14 on, I was really sharing my faith vibrantly. Age 16, I got this call to be a pastor, and it was not what I sought after. But once I got that in my heart, that has become my life.

J.D. Pearring 6:32

Well, well, you so you were called early, and and you jumped into it pretty early, right?

John Jackson 6:38

I did. Uh, I kind of went after it. I'm uh got a little bit of that maybe in my personality. Um, so I said, okay, Lord, if I'm gonna be a pastor, and this is the way I grew up, because I grew up in church. Um, I thought I was gonna go to college, go to seminary, and then I was gonna go to South Dakota and preach to 25 people and some sheep. Because that's the story I'd heard from my dad's generation. If God calls you son, you say yes, and you go out in the middle of nowhere where you don't know anybody and you preach to some people. And so uh I went after it, JD. I went to college, uh, I started being a youth pastor. Uh well, fill in a little bit of the story. I met the woman who's my wife today uh when I was 16. I saw her and I said, and I heard her testimony of the Lord, and I said, Man, I want to marry that girl. So I turned 18 in July. We got married in August, and in September, I became a youth pastor at a small little tiny Baptist church in Buena Park, California. And this is how much the Lord rightfully trusted me at the time, JD. I'm 18 years old and I'm being youth pastor with four kids in the youth group. And uh, I don't even know if the Lord should have trusted me with those four. But anyway, the Lord grew that. So I was married at 18. The Lord grew that it went from four to 40, and that was the beginning.

J.D. Pearring 7:56

So you've well, you did a lot at 18. You're you've uh always been uh more mature than your age, maybe even now.

Early Ministry And Marriage

J.D. Pearring 8:05

Um, so what what do you do from there?

John Jackson 8:08

Well, so um this is kind of the trajectory, and I hope when listeners are hearing this, they'll go like, gosh, like what's up with that? And how much of that was God and how much of that was John? And I want to interject a little bit, but I was a youth pastor for a year and a half on Braina Park. Then we went back to the church that my wife had kind of grown up in uh in Oxnard, California. And that was really a shaping moment. 12 years there, I was a youth pastor, education pastor, associate pastor, and then I'll I'll pause for just a second. Seven years. That's seven years, JD. I was able to uh finish my seminary degree at Fuller Seminary because of some experiences I had in my undergraduate work, um, where people look down on Christian education. I ended up getting a PhD from the University of California, but I want to press pause. So I'm 25, I got a PhD, I've been married for seven years. I've been a youth pastor, uh associate pastor, a minister of education before that. JD, if I look back at those seven years, um I do not recommend that to anybody. Um, I was not healthy, I was striving. I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And it wasn't that I was trying to be better than other people. I I have a strong competitive thing in me, but it's it's more about self-competence. Like, are you being your best? But there was a lot of that time period, JD, where I look back and I have regrets because I I was striving. I was, I think, trying to earn God's approval. I I discovered this later on is somehow, some way. I thought God would love me more if I achieved more. And it it took a long time to just really

Striving To Earn God’s Approval

John Jackson 9:40

come to peace with man, I gotta be who God's called me to be and and stop this, you know, striving. So anyway, when I was 25, uh JD, the church I was in, maybe I was just beginning of 26, uh, age 26, the church I was in, the pastor had a serious moral failure. And this was about a 90-year-old Baptist church. We love the people dearly, but the senior pastor had a terrible series of moral failures. This was back in the 80s when the televangelist scandals were happening, and yeah, our church blew up. It was bad. JD, I remember going to a Christian bookstore and hearing somebody at the counter explain to somebody else why they wouldn't want to go to our Baptist church because there's a lot of scandal there. And at that time, I had gone from the acting or the associate pastor to being the acting senior pastor. And I'm 26 and like, what do I know? But I'm trying to be mature and all grown up. And so I became the senior pastor. And for five years, I was senior pastor of uh this 90-year-old Baptist church. And GD, uh, there's this old saying, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Um, those 12 years in Oxnard, California were so shaping of my life. Um, they, you know, I still look at at young men and young women who are now old like me, or older people who've now gone on to be with the Lord. That was a shaping moment. So from there, um, just accelerate quickly. I I for five years was the executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest.

J.D. Pearring 11:14

How does that happen? How do they give that to what you're 30, 31?

John Jackson 11:19

I was 31. I was the youngest in the 200-year history of uh Baptists. And JD, I gotta tell you this story just very quickly. Um, there was an older man, I'm gonna tell you who it was in just a minute. There was an older man who was like, you're not supposed to know who's the candidates, but you know, Baptist life, you sort of figure out who is. There was an older man, and uh, I think he should have gotten it. He had experience, he'd been successful, but he'd probably developed a few enemies over over time. And so uh, so I was the young kind of rising star, like, hey, he's pastored a church through really rough circumstances. By the way, Oxnard did not grow

Leading After A Moral Failure

John Jackson 11:55

like crazy, but we stabilized and we were known as a fruitful church. I was, I think, a good teacher, a disciple, a leader, but we were not, we were not hitting church growth records. Everybody looks at me and go, like, oh, you always grew. Not necessarily. Sometimes there's a real time of a church settling. And so anyway, they they I think they picked me partly JD because nobody who was smart enough would take that job. Uh and then, second of all, there was the problem with the maybe the politics. So here's the end of the story. His name was Bill Ebling. He just died. He just uh went on to be with the Lord. He was such a gifted guy. And two weeks after I started the job, I reached out to him and said, Hey, can we have lunch? We had lunch, and I said, Is there any way you'd come alongside me and you serve in the, I think it was the world missions role, the the fundraising and world missions role? And uh, let's do this together, okay? Because we both loved the region. I grew up there, he'd spent a lot of his life there, and so I served there for five years, JD, and I tease sometimes and say God was punishing me that I served in denominational life, but 270 churches, four western states. There'd been huge financial problems, but the Lord was faithful. Churches uh doubled the number of baptisms in those five years. We focused on camping and church planting and church health. And JD God just did some amazing stuff. And I'm so excited that years later they became Transformation Ministries. I know that you've had such a significant uh uh partnership with the Excel Network and you've helped a lot of the ministries there. Um, the last three people who've occupied the job since me, I've had the privilege to know all of them and to be in relationship. And so I'm so excited about that. But JD, something was in my heart. And uh I I miss the local church. I often say to people, I love Jesus, I love family, and I love the church. And so much of that denominational role I was missing, even though I spoke in churches and pastors were my friends, and we we poured into their the network. My wife and I, we still had little kids and we missed the local church. So that began a stirring. It took, I think, JD,

Denominational Leadership Lessons

John Jackson 14:05

almost 16 months to to culminate, but there was a stirring that eventually led to us saying, We're gonna go plant a church.

J.D. Pearring 14:12

So where did the planting come from? Is that just you were doing that with uh the region and you just kind of got a heart for it?

John Jackson 14:20

You know what, JD? Honestly, I I I hate to admit to these things because it sounds so unspiritual, but I remember praying to the Lord, Lord, if I could leave this denominational role and go to another medium to large church, which is what I'd been a part of before, if I could go to a medium to large church, have a really good office, a really good salary, um, then I know I could do good things for the kingdom. I I I prayed that crass prayer. I mean, sorry, but that's how cornal I was. Um, and JD, there were some opportunities. My wife and I went to these places and we prayed and it was clear that it was none of Jesus and it was all of me. So we went through this process and we went to a conference, had nothing to do with church planting, and we kept praying. And we felt, JD, like the Lord gave us a vision. He gave us a vision to plant a church, he gave us a vision of the place it was going to be. And JD, it was a place I'd never been to. I had always said I'd never be a pastor or missionary. It felt like church planting. I was being called to be a missionary. Yeah. So JD, we left Southern California, where we'd lived all our lives. And we went to northern Nevada. We sent a letter out to our Christmas card list, not quite, but almost said, Hey, here's our children. They're gonna starve if you don't support us. We didn't say that, but you know, cast a vision for a church. Three couples decided to leave their home and come with us. So we started with eight adults, 12 children, but we did the worst kind of church plant. We parachute dropped into Carson Valley, Nevada, which is just south of Carson City. And we had a heart to reach Carson Valley, Carson City, and JD. That was the most exciting 13 year. We've been 12 years in Oxnard, 13 years in Carson Valley to this day. I would say those were the most exciting ministry years of our entire life. Unbelievable.

J.D. Pearring 16:12

Well, that was just an amazing, amazing church that you planted there. Incredible ministry. Uh, just touching so many people's lives, John. That um uh I got to see some of that. That was just really, really cool. But what happened after 13 years? You uh well, so I started the backside of Tahoe, I think.

John Jackson 16:32

Yeah, and and believe me, like we were living on the foothills, we're about 4,700 feet. We literally could be at Heavenly Ski Resort in 15 minutes. I hate to confess to that. Uh, we had amazing people, and and JD, I'll just say with all

The Call To Plant A Church

John Jackson 16:45

honesty, it never gets old seeing people come to know Christ, seeing marriages be saved, seeing families restored, and seeing a community impacted. Like I'm I sometimes will say this, hi, uh my name is John, and I'm addicted to transformation. Just like I don't know, I'm 61, almost 62. Seeing people get saved, seeing people get healed, seeing people's marriages come together, seeing families have hope, prodigals coming home. Man, gets me going, gets me enough juice to keep going. So we were, I was there minding my own business, JD, and uh through a series of circumstances, actually started with Jack Hamilton at High Desert Church down in Victorville. Uh, Jack introduced me to Ray Johnston at Bayside Church. And so Ray and I had been in good rapport since 1997 when we started the church. He was watching uh what was happening. It was called Carson Valley Christian Center at first, CBC, and then it became Life Point Church, and that's where it is today. It's still a thriving ministry. But he was watching us and said, Man, you need to come over, help me do this. And so I agreed not to come over, but I agreed to launch Thriving Churches International. Took my nonprofit ministry that I was just speaking and writing and doing some things and said, Okay, we'll launch it with this, we'll make this Thriving Churches International. And uh then I'll just come help Bayside Church. But Bayside Church in Sacramento has a gravitational pull. And so over time, uh, they just kept saying, Hey, we need you to come over, we need you to Ray set up this thing where um he uh and I and a guy named Bill Clark, the office of the senior pastor with three of us. So there are three senior pastors. It's kind of an early version of multi-site, except we just had a main auditorium and then a I think we had a video cafe. That was all Bayside had at the beginning. And so for a year and a half, JD, I I pastored my church, led Thriving Churches International, and then I would drive over to Bayside to help during the week, not during the weekend, but just during the week.

J.D. Pearring 18:47

I remember those days, John. Yeah.

John Jackson 18:49

Oh, and it was insane. I I look back at that and say, Lord, what was I thinking? I uh whatever I

Bayside Fit And Leadership Styles

John Jackson 18:55

was thinking, I wasn't thinking well. Um, but eventually, um, JD, we got my successor, Bill McCready, uh, put in at Life Point Church, and we felt like we we had to ultimately be over here. And I want to say this with affection. Uh, I still have a daughter and son-in-law who work at Bayside Church. So I want to say this with affection, but I also want to be real. When I was commuting and being a consultant, my relationship with Ray worked. And I think I was helpful to Bayside. When I got here on the ground, a lot of stuff was changing. But when I was here on the ground full time, Ray and I were not good together. Now I love Ray. He and I are still have a really good relationship. We honor each other. I think we speak well of each other all the time. And he's amazingly gifted. I mean, if anybody's been in the Sacramento region, you know, Ray Johnston can raise money and mobilize people like nobody I've ever seen.

J.D. Pearring 19:49

Leadership instincts are off the charts.

John Jackson 19:51

Yeah, and when you said instinct, he does this thing where he kind of he's a tactile learner. He'll actually rub his fingers together and you just know that when that's happening, he's sensing something in the room. And again, off the charts gifted. But I I would sometimes say to him, Ray, um, you're like Steve Jobs and I'm like Bill Gates. And what I meant by that, and this is a leadership insight, um, Ray's real gift is innovation. He'll imagine and dream of something. Uh in fact, sometimes he has five amazing ideas before lunch. Me, I'm a strategy uh structure systems person. And so I dream of the castles in the sky, but I also design the road to get there. And what happened at Bayside when I was on the ground is that Ray's style and my style um, they were in conflict. And I don't mean that we were conflict like this, I just mean it was a different style. So there's an old Peter Drucker quote that I think people will like, and that is that culture eats strategy for breakfast. The culture of Bayside was kind of like fast moving change on a dime, go after this today, and then go after that tomorrow, and that's just so not me. Now, again, I honor Bayside and I honor Ray and I honor the ministry. It's an unbelievably amazing church. It's just not me. So Ray and I kept talking, and I think Ray, you know, he loves me. I think he valued my gifts, but it was clear to me that this was not gonna work. And so honestly, JD, I had for the first time in my entire life, like a little bit of a crisis of man, did I not hear God? Why did I come over here? And it was in that context

The Ricochet To Jessup University

John Jackson 21:45

that Jessup University kept reaching out to us. And when they reached out to us, I finally met with a search committee, said, I'm not interested. I'm not a bureaucrat. I don't like things that move slowly, I don't even love higher ed. But I gave them kind of what I thought they needed in a president, but they should find somebody else. And I was just going to go pastor another large church or pastor a ministry or something like that, lead a ministry. And JD, what happened was uh after about a three-month period of time, uh, one of the key leaders of Jessup, who, by the way, just to shamelessly name-drop, his name is Pat Gelsinger. He's now the CEO of Intel. How Jessup University had a connection with the man who is now the CEO of Intel is just a God story. My predecessor, Bryce Jessup, had married Pat and Linda when Pat was 18, 19 years old. And Pat was the first chief technology officer of Intel, left Intel to another company, came back. And when I, when Jessup was talking to me, Pat was the chairman of the board because he had come at Bryce's request to kind of help settle things down at Jessup because there was kind of a rocky place. So, long story short, um, in 2011, I left Bayside after being literally only nine months on the ground. It felt for the first time in my life, JD, like a ricochet. I came to Jessup. Pat had said, John, I've got vision, I've got direction, I'll support you on the board. And uh Pat's not on the board anymore. He can't with all the craziness he does. But I just had dinner with he and Linda um a few months ago, actually a few weeks ago, and um just such a faithful couple. And it was like God, it felt like a ricochet, JD, but that was our answer to why did God bring us over here? We probably never would have said yes to Jessup if it would have come from our church to here, but getting on this side of the mountain, Jessup became God's answer as to why. And it's been it's uh I'm in my 13th year and it's been an amazing journey.

J.D. Pearring 23:47

Well, you've done an amazing job at Jessup of taking uh it and really putting it on the map. Uh, I know you got a big vision for

Jessup Promise Faith And Careers

J.D. Pearring 23:55

Jessup. Um, hey, I've got a uh my oldest granddaughter will be a senior this coming year. Um give me the pitch to give to her to go to Jessup.

John Jackson 24:07

Well, that's fantastic. So let me give you a couple pitches. First of all, uh, for you as uh as a as a grandfather, uh and for any parents who are listening or any students who would listen, um, three things I guarantee when you come to Jessup. Number one, if we're stuck in an elevator, I'm gonna tell you these three things. Number one, your faith is gonna be built up, not torn down. A lot of times when people come to college, their faith, especially Christian faith, gets targeted and gets destroyed. Your faith will be built up at Jessup. You want to grow spiritually? We have amazingly deep, biblically rich, uh, spirit of God-inspired resources here to help you grow spiritually. So you grow spiritually. Number two, um, you're gonna master the fundamentals. You spend time at Jessup, you're gonna read, write, think, and speak well. Read, write, think, and speak well. And that's never going out of style. You know, the reality is I don't know what's gonna happen with technology, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, all kinds of craziness happening in our economy. I can't promise you about the jobs of 20 years from now. What I can tell you though is if you learn to read, to write, to think, and to speak well, you will always be able to do number three. That's the third pitch. So you master those fundamentals, grow spiritually, master the fundamentals number three, you're gonna be exceptionally employable. Over 90% of Jessup grads on the day they walk across the stage, on the day they walk across the stage, what happens is they uh get a fake diploma, first of all, but over 90%, they get a job upon graduation, or they're admitted full-time into master's level study. So we've got a range of all the study, the disciplines you can study in the sciences, business, education, psychology, uh, leadership and ministry, all kinds of different arts, uh, music, theater, et cetera. All that's available here. And what I would say to you, JD, is um anybody who's a part of a partner church gets an automatic uh $2,000 scholarship. Uh, we have academic scholarships. Uh, people look on the website and go, oh my goodness, $37,000. Can I just say this to you? Nobody pays $37,000. Uh, all Jessup students, 94% get a substantial scholarship aid. And the average scholarship is about 18 to 20,000. That's right on our website. You can look at the federal government stats. If you're a ministry worker, a full-time ministry worker family, if you come from that kind of family, you automatically get a very substantial scholarship. So we just do everything in our power to reach. If you'll give me her name, I'll go after her. Hannah Perry. That's Hannah Perry. Okay, Hannah. We're coming after you.

J.D. Pearring 26:48

Hey, um, I really appreciate just you going over your story. Um, I have just a high degree of respect for you, John. Love what you're doing. Um, love what uh what you have done, read all your books. Hey, um, and you've already done some of this, but give us a leadership tip

Leadership Tips Focus And Alignment

J.D. Pearring 27:05

or two that you'd have for us.

John Jackson 27:07

Yeah, thanks, JD. Um let me let me uh focus on two things. Um Stephen Covey wrote a book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And I don't remember a lot of the book, but I do remember one of them. One of his seven habits was begin with the end in mind. Right. And I would just say, man, if if you're a leader out there and you're you're leading a small group of boys or girls, you're leading a big, huge church, you're you know, grappling with a church plant that's just getting started. Um, just get really clear about your vision. Just really make sure that the vision you're going after is from God. I just have to be honest that that sometimes in my life I've I've gone after a vision. I'm kind of a leader and I'm figuring out where we can go. And but sometimes that's been my vision, not his. And what will sustain you in the dark and everybody goes through dark times is to have a specific, clear vision that came from God. So that's the first thing I'd say is begin with the end in mind, make sure it comes from God. So that's my first leadership tip. A second leadership tip uh is is this um I use the acronym FAR. If you want to go FAR, what does that look like? Well, I use the word FAR to symbolize focus, alignment and reach. Focus, begin with the end in mind. So get clear about where you're going. The letter A, alignment. If you're not basically having all the parts of your organization in alignment, you'll never experience synergy. What is synergy? Synergy is when you take all the individual parts and the combination of them together are more than the sum of the parts. JD, you and I are of the age where we we know what it's like to be in churches, where the women's ministries fighting against the seniors' ministries, fighting against the children's ministry, and they're all kind of going in different directions. That is so destructive. It leads to cults of personality, it leads to turf and territory wars, budget wars, you know, just all that stuff. Alignment is about making sure that all the parts of the organization are going together. Here's one of my favorite leadership quotes. I've probably read 40,000 pages on leadership. This quote comes from Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all messed up. How many of us have done stuff and we didn't organize before? And then what happened is chaos. And uh I'll mention again my dear friends at Bayside who have massive amounts of energy, but sometimes I lovingly will say Bayside's chaos theory in motion. Like there is order in chaos. But can I say this? Clarity reproduces, clarity grows. Chaos might have an energy, but if you're not aligned, if you're not focused, you're not going to be able to extend your reach over time. So I think one of the things the Lord has given me that I would just would love to share with others, be clear about the vision that God has given you. And then make sure that if you want to go far, that you're focused and you're aligned. Because if you're focused and aligned, then you'll extend your reach. I'll close with this. Larry Osborne, uh North Coast Church. Most people know about Larry. I used to say years ago, he's probably, I don't know, five, 10 years older than me. I used to say he was way smarter than the rest of us on the West Coast. But Larry has a regret, and he's written about this publicly. He had a church that boomed, I think it was three or four hundred when he came and went to 2000. Yay! Success. That's what we all pray for, right? He said that that period of church growth was one of the most painful periods in his entire life. Because what happened was the elders were fighting, the staff was fighting. There were literally little turf things below the surface. And what he said to me in conversation, and what he's written in one or two of his books, is he wished he would have spent longer time growing more slowly and getting really clear about the vision and getting really clear about unity. He wrote a tiny little book years ago called The Unity Factor. And he said that he had regrets of that. Now, North Coast has thousands upon thousands and multiple sites now, but they are so precise and clear. Um, most of your listeners probably JD would know Larry from you know Sticky Church and Sticky Teams. And that sticky that he's talking about is clarity.

J.D. Pearring 31:55

Yes. It's good. Well, hey, well, thanks so much, John. Um, keep up the good work. Um, are you gonna go do something crazy

Open Palms Mentors And Next Steps

J.D. Pearring 32:05

now? I mean, you've done all these different things. What's what's left? Missionary in South Dakota? Is that what's left?

John Jackson 32:10

Yeah, no, no, please, please, Lord. Uh so you know what, JD, honestly, uh like a Corey Tanboom, uh, you know, of hiding place fame, uh said her goal was to go through life with open palms. So we're trying not to hold tightly, but I've told the board and I feel clear about it. Uh 61, almost 62. I thought it was only to be at Jessup part-time, you know, three, five years, and then I would go to another long-term pastoral ministry. We actually are starting a church here on the campus of Jessup, believe it or not, not to compete with other churches, but to reach those students who just don't go off campus. And uh, I think post-COVID, one of our hearts is to make disciples who make disciples. So the whole reproduction. And um, we think there's a lot of people who want more smaller settings, 25, 30, 40. That's what we have right now. That's all we're doing, is just trying to pour into people so that they could reproduce health. I think, JD, that that Jessup is the platform that I can keep pouring into and keep using that through the book and through speaking. Uh I still speak at other churches all over the place. And so I just appreciate, I want to say this quickly for your listeners. I appreciate the Excel network for what you do to link together leaders for best practices. Um, sometimes leadership is very isolating and very lonely. And we've got to have good friends, good relationship, people that we can be honest with. Sometimes in your church community, you can't say all the stuff, but you can to another church planter. You can to somebody who's a coach or a mentor. And I remember many years ago, JD, when you were first starting uh the Excel network, you were really huge on everybody needs a mentor. We need we need people who can pour into our lives. And so I just want to say thank you for the body of Christ for doing that for so many years and the network you've built.

J.D. Pearring 34:02

It's been uh it's been fun. It's been great, and uh, you've been a big part of that. So thanks so much, John. And thanks for being on the podcast today.

Announcer 34:09

You're welcome.

John Jackson 34:10

God bless.

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Announcer 34:12

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations Podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at ExcelNetwork.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. See you next time with another leading conversation.